As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to these users is an information handling system. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may vary with respect to the type of information handled; the methods for handling the information; the methods for processing, storing or communicating the information; the amount of information processed, stored, or communicated; and the speed and efficiency with which the information is processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include or comprise a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
An information handling system may include a bus that operates according to the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) specification. Peripheral Component Interconnect is a bus between the processor and attached devices in an information handling system. PCI Express is an expansion of the PCI specification. As compared with the original PCI standards, PCI Express provides for an expansion of the width of the bus and a higher bus clock rate. As compared with a shared bus topology, PCI Express uses a point-to-point bus topology. As a result, a bridge device or controller functions as a switch to direct communications between a host and a PCI device. In a typical PCI Express architecture, however, a PCI device may only be addressable by a single host operating system. As such, in a computer system architecture that includes multiple hosts, a PCI device could not be shared by the multiple hosts of the computer system.